Should We View the News We Consume Through a Bias Filter?

-first published in Substack blog “The “Last Editor” on September 3, 2025

The answer may be yes—but not for the reason you’re thinking

I’m not sure where I first heard about Ground News. It may have been in an Instagram ad or perhaps on LinkedIn. I think I was intrigued by its offer to “break free from algorithms” and compare news sources. I was less interested in its claim to “read between the lines of media bias,” but I figured it was worth a look. Ground News is a news aggregator—nothing new there—that wraps itself in the notion that it can factor in the biases of news outlets to give readers a chance to think for themselves about what they’re reading. I, of course, have no problem with people thinking for themselves. I do have some issue if Ground News wants to suggest that all news outlets are partisan in some way. My expertise is in local TV news and I know that’s just not the case for us. Local TV has always thrived by being all things to all people, so taking a partisan slant just won’t work.

Once I dived more deeply into what Ground News is trying to do, I could see there was a finer point on it than simply a media bias filter. First off, Ground News is a terrific aggregator. I’m finding stories there I don’t see a lot of the big American media outlets covering. Second, its classification of news outlets actually spans three dimensions: bias, accuracy and ownership. Ownership is a matter of fact, so no qualms with having that available for people to readily find. Ground News classifies ownership in eight categories: media conglomerate, private equity, individual owner, government, telecom companies, non-media conglomerate corporations, independent and other. Knowing who owns the outlet you’re visiting can be useful, so fine. Bias and accuracy can be more of a matter of opinion, so I had to look deeper into how Ground News determines those.

In terms of bias and accuracy, Ground News uses ratings provided by three external sources: All Sides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias Fact Check. This is where the model starts to break down.

All Sides, for instance, rates the Associated Press as far left as the Huffington Post. That ludicrous rating may be due in part to All Sides allowing the public to vote on some factor in the ratings. As for Ad Fontes Media, you may have seen its rather dense, pyramid-shaped Media Bias Chart with outlets like Pod Save America on the far left (no argument there) and InfoWars on the far right (definitely no argument there).

But the middle of that pyramid is where I have problems. Ad Fontes Media lists ProPublica as an outlet that skews left. As part of its analysis, the site lists recent ProPublica articles with their bias rating. On the current list, an article entitled, “Louisiana Judges Systematically Ignored Prisoners’ Petitions Without Review” gets the most left-leaning bias score of all stories listed with a -15.67 (left-leaning scores are negative numbers while right-leaning scores are positive numbers, with a perfectly unbiased story being 0.0 and a maximum positive or negative score of 42.0). Actually reading that story, the only way you could think it has a liberal bias is if you think granting Black people the same rights to petition the court as white people is a liberal idea.

The accuracy rating doesn’t fare much better.

The lowest reliability score (as Ad Fontes Media calls it) for the ProPublica list of articles goes to one entitled, “Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Public School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition,” which received a score of 39.0 (the highest reliability score is 64.0, though it’s hard on the chart to find a story rated above the 40s). This story is carefully documented with on-the-record interviews and a paper trail, so it’s hard to figure its relatively low score. Ad Fontes Media says it considers each piece’s “veracity, expression, its title/headline and graphics.” I again find it difficult to score the ProPublica piece low in any of those measures.

So if I’m not wild about the bias and reliability ratings used by Ground News to score the stories it aggregates, why am I still reading it?

The reason is another feature that, while it tries to grab your attention with a gimmicky label, is showing me stories I’m not already seeing—even with my pretty broad consumption of media. Ground News has trademarked this segment of its content as Blindspot, describing it as “a news story that has political undertones and is disproportionately covered by media sources on one side of the political spectrum.”

Various stories are listed as Blindspot pieces, with a graph showing what percentage of outlets on the left or right covered it (again, you have to take the left-right rating with a grain of salt for this to work, but bear with me). Ground News gives this example of how a story would qualify to be a Blindspot for the left:
-Fewer than 10 Left-leaning sources reporting it
-Right-leaning coverage is by at least 33% of outlets
-Left-leaning coverage is at or below the number given by this somewhat arbitrary-looking formula: (R/L% - 33) x (30/37)
-And Blindspot stories cannot have an Factuality rating below 35%
With those requirements in mind, this feature is where I see real value, both for average news consumers and for journalists.

For your run-of-the-mill consumers of news, these Blindspot pieces can really do what Ground News intends.

They can open consumers’ eyes to stories they will never see in their typically siloed news diet. If you read the New York Post regularly or spend a lot of time on Fox News, we can all agree you’re missing out on some stories that don’t fit the paradigms of those two outlets. The gatekeeping function every newsroom performs has different standards for coverage at those right-wing outlets as compared to what you’ll see on neutral local TV news or on left-leaning outlets like The American Independent. Exposing news consumers to legitimate stories their favorite outlets would never choose to cover can only help move us back toward a more informed society with a wider understanding of important issues.

For journalists, Ground News’ Blindspot can be an excellent source of story ideas that might help us better serve our audiences.

I’m surprised how often I see a story on Ground News Blindspot that I have never encountered before. That’s the one feature that keeps me going back to the app for more. I’m not working to create stories on a regular basis anymore, but if I were, I’d be checking the app every day to see if there’s something I can advance or localize for my own audience.

Americans’ news diets are problematic, to say the least. I’ve advocated personally and publicly for requiring media literacy education starting in elementary school. Even if that were to start today, we have a huge problem with our adult population and the limited number of sources people choose for their daily news—and an even bigger problem with those who don’t consume news daily or even weekly or monthly. One news app is not going to solve all those problems. But Ground News and others trying to break down the silos sure can’t hurt.

Note: This post is entirely my opinion. I received no compensation from Ground News or any other source mentioned here.